TALKING ABOUT COMPETITION LEAGUE HERE, not a group of random playing together… Maybe caps will make you read harder 
The try harder was not aimed at anyone in peculiar btw, no offense…
And yes Etek if you get raped day by day in a league its time to relearn some strat and improve your aim.
[QUOTE=Apples;263653]TALKING ABOUT COMPETITION LEAGUE HERE, not a group of random playing together… Maybe caps will make you read harder
The try harder was not aimed at anyone in peculiar btw, no offense…
And yes Etek if you get raped day by day in a league its time to relearn some strat and improve your aim.[/QUOTE]
then why shouldn’t be there a individual rating?and you can choose some server that is based on your rating.
so you have more equeal fight and if you become better . the system will give you higher rating and you can get on server with that rating.
result more balance and more fun then one side rape… How many time I didn’t that see that in public.
Same in Cod 4. had enough matches where won SD matches 10-1 …
Also if you talk about competition how does it disapprove my point?
This is an awesome idea. The matchmaking system in sc2 has really made the game simple to play. You don’t have to be on irc looking for matches all the time.
The only downside with this is the latency. Fps gamers are very dependent on their ping and don’t want any lag what so ever. You never know if you get to play someone from the other side of europe or not unless there’s a ping requirement.
One way to go around this is to have a box where you can enter your servers IP and choose “queue with a server”. Then SDnet will send a request to the server to start ladder match mode and then vote for maps.
This gets a little more complicated then just starting a sc2 match but it could actually work. You’ll have to have a box where you can say <50 ping and so on.
That’s probably one way to do it. Though when they released sc2 they knew that it would become enormous. When a game is that big a matchmaking system makes sense. You rarely have to wait for more then 1 min i sc2 to find a match. You might have way more wait time here since I doubt brink will beat how many copies sc2 sold. We can always hope though 
[QUOTE=ehrw;263657]This is an awesome idea. The matchmaking system in sc2 has really made the game simple to play. You don’t have to be on irc looking for matches all the time.
The only downside with this is the latency. Fps gamers are very dependent on their ping and don’t want any lag what so ever. You never know if you get to play someone from the other side of europe or not unless there’s a ping requirement.
One way to go around this is to have a box where you can enter your servers IP and choose “queue with a server”. Then SDnet will send a request to the server to start ladder match mode and then vote for maps.
This gets a little more complicated then just starting a sc2 match but it could actually work. You’ll have to have a box where you can say <50 ping and so on.
That’s probably one way to do it. Though when they released sc2 they knew that it would become enormous. When a game is that big a matchmaking system makes sense. You rarely have to wait for more then 1 min i sc2 to find a match. You might have way more wait time here since I doubt brink will beat how many copies sc2 sold. We can always hope though :)[/QUOTE]
SC2 got different battlenet servers one for US one for europa
Only also want to play against american teams so there should be option on wich server you want to play on WHEN you are matched
also there can be custom matches ^^ with custom league’s to solve this problem
this for different rulesets
you dont get it.
Brink ALREADY had similar system, working in different[less obviousl but more reliable]way.
[QUOTE=brbrbr;263660]you dont get it.
Brink ALREADY had similar system, working in different[less obviousl but more reliable]way.[/QUOTE]
Can you point out that information because I didn’t saw that info … or something that repesent the SC2 match making play
[QUOTE=Etek;263641]Matchmaking works in SC2 but it’s a total stupid idea for shooters. What will be the point of having dedicated servers?
[/QUOTE]
Fair enough, SC2 is a p2p multiplayer (RTS can get away with that) which makes matchmaking much easier. However, Brink already happily switches teams (winners and losers) back and forth from servers. If they can do that, then rated matchmaking shouldn’t be a problem either.
[QUOTE=brbrbr;263660]you dont get it.
Brink ALREADY had similar system, working in different[less obviousl but more reliable]way.[/QUOTE]
The information on the way matches are organised is very scarce, we have no idea how the current system works.
[QUOTE=Krysiss;263640]What do you mean by ELO?
Also to set this up as project would be cool if Splash damage doesn’t see this should be there in there game.[/QUOTE]
Here’s the ratings explained http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chess_rating_system
And this is what WoW uses http://www.wowwiki.com/Arena_PvP_system (the wow explanation is more clear)
The ‘league wizard’ (I should patent this) hasn’t been done by games yet. So that would be more work than adopting an already tried and true method. Eventually I’d like to see both, I want Blizzard to add it in to SC2 so you can easily run little tournaments with friends, and I want to see it in Brink so more casual games become involved in it.
Skill-based Rankings and Skill-Based Matchmaking are Relevant to Brink:
Having followed this discussion and having heard the developers (Splash Damage) talk about achieving a balanced, team-oriented multiplayer experience, I think the idea of an SC2-esque matchmaking system is quite relevant to Brink.
BUT I don’t think we will be seeing it at Launch
However, I doubt that this feature will be implemented in the retail game, because, quite frankly, we haven’t heard anything about it for Brink. The only multiplayer balancing feature that I can recall is the ‘enemy intel mission’ for floundering players (which has been scrapped, to the best of my knowledge).
On a related note, to those of you who doubt that skill-based / ranking systems are relevant to Brink then please read on:
To counter your objections, it would be useful for me to highlight a few videogames that have successfully employed ranking systems and skill-based matchmaking systems (not a comprehensive list):
Games that Employ Skill-Based Matchmaking Systems Effectively:
Starcraft 2
Halo 3
Halo: Reach
As has been previously mentioned, these games employ ‘ELO’ systems. An ELO system ranks players based on their wins and losses, and it assigns them a ranking based on not only the numbers of wins (and losses) but also based upon the quality (strength) of their opponents.
In Halo 3, you saw the indicator of your rating in the form of your ‘skill’ in ranked matches (a number between 1 and 50). The true value of your ELO ranking was hidden from the player in Halo 3.
In Halo:Reach, numerical indications of your ELO rating are hidden from the player, but skill-based matchmaking can be turned on in your preferences. Likewise, there is an ‘Arena’ where teams can compete and will be ranked into Bronze, Silver, Gold, or Onyx leagues (indicative of skill).
Similarly, Starcraft 2 relies on an ELO system to rank players into leagues indicative of their skill level and mastery of the game. i.e. Bronze, Silver, Gold, Platinum, Diamond
An Explanation of the ELO System for Ranking Individuals, Random Groups of Individuals, and Teams:
The way that all of these ELO systems ranks players is as follows:
Set the player’s ranking so that if they were to match up against evenly ranked players, then the likelihood of victory (or defeat) is roughly 50% (i.e. 50% W/L ratio).
Over time, if a player outperforms the ranking as assigned by the system (solely on the basis of wins and losses, not based upon in-game performance), then their ranking (i.e. ‘skill’ as acknowledged by the system) must increase until a 50% win rate is achieved (in this case, by matching the player up against more difficult opponents until their W/L ratio decreased to ~50%).
The cool thing about the ELO system is that it can be applied to individuals, random groups of individuals, or teams. The system simply applies a ranking to each unique group of players. In the case of Starcraft 2, for instance, you could even be assigned a ranking for your performance with ‘Random’ teammates.
Behind the scenes, a database stores (and updates) your score in the ELO system based on your performance for each unique group of players. The system becomes more ‘confident’ as you accumulate more games played with that same group of unique players. In practice, the system relies on two variables to do this: one variable stores the crude estimate of your skill level; another variable represents the variance that it is willing to apply based upon the number of games that you have played. This second variable decreases in magnitude as you play more games and the system becomes more ‘confident’ with your overall ranking. Accordingly, the ranking for a consistent group of players (i.e. an organized team that always plays together) would be more ‘accurate’ (and ‘confident’) than for a random group of players. However, it is still possible to rank the random group of players.
i.e. ‘Skill’ of player = True skill variable vale +/- Variance variable (that converges over time)
ELO and Starcraft 2:
The Starcraft 2 developers (Blizzard) chose to implement an ELO matchmaking system as the primary method of matchmaking, because of the extremely wide variance in skill across the SC2 community. They wanted to preserve a fun gameplay experience for players by ensuring that they didn’t just continually stomp or completely decimate all of their opponents. They reasoned that Starcraft 2 is more fun when you win roughly 50% of the time and play competitive games against evenly matched opponents.
As anyone who is familiar with Starcraft 2 knows, you can be ranked as an individual in 1v1; as a team in 2v2, 3v3, and 4v4; or as a random team player in 2v2, 3v3, or 4v4. The point is: ranking with ELO works even when you, as an individual, are a random player playing on teams of variable teammates.
ELO and the Halo Franchise:
It is worth noting that Halo 3 and Halo:Reach handle skill-based rankings differently.
In Halo 3, the ELO system is based upon your W/L ratio.
i.e. Skill_Rating_new = Skill_Rating_old +/- Bonus_weighted_by_opponent_ranking_and_skill
In Halo:Reach, (for at least one type of ranking) the developers came up with a crude algorithm that both correlates well with the aforementioned skill-based rating but is more geared towards being an effective team-player (as opposed to a successful lone-wolf).
i.e. In-Game Performance Rating = Kills + Assists - Deaths/(~3)
i.e. Skill_new = Skill_old +/- Relative_Performance_Rating_weighted_by_Opponent_Ranking_and_Skill
Both the systems of Halo 3 and Halo:Reach approximate player skill in order to rank and sort players for a more competitive (and satisfying [by their reasoning]) matchmaking experience.
In a game like Halo 3 or Halo:Reach, there may also be a wide variance in skill, but it seems to me that the gameplay experience isn’t compromised as much as it is in the case of Starcraft. There also seems to be some self-selection in the community based on your skill. For instance, I have observed that more casual (and often less ‘skilled’ players) tend to flock to the ‘Rumble Pit’ and ‘Big Team Slayer’ playlists. Likewise, the most hardcore players are more drawn to game modes like objective play, ‘Arena’, or team slayer variants. Furthermore, some of the fun of Halo 3 and Halo:Reach lies in completely dominating lesser opponents (i.e. through better skill, better team-based coordination, using vehicles, or whoring power weapons), and the in-game medal system seems to acknowledge this fact. For example, would a ‘Running Riot’ (15 kill-streak) medal really be relevant, from a game-design perspective, if there was the expectation of a consistent gameplay experience and evenly-matched opponents? Unlikely. Therefore, you can reason that some (if not most) of the fun in Halo 3 and Halo:Reach is in pummeling ‘noobs’. Nonetheless, Halo 3 and Halo:Reach have implemented robust systems for skill-based matchmaking to accommodate competitive players who want to match up against evenly ranked opponents.
The Lack of ELO in the Call of Duty Franchise:
By contrast, I will briefly touch on the Call of Duty franchise. Call of Duty places no emphasis on skill-based or ranked gameplay. There are organized leagues that do rank teams and organize games (i.e. Gamebattles, MLG, etc.), however, these are outside of the scope of Activision and its developers (i.e. InfinityWard, Treyarch, etc.).
As anyone who has played Call of Duty knows, the way that they addresses the issue of skill is by offering players a strong incentive to place themselves at a moderate disadvantage by limiting their kit customization abilities (aka ‘Prestiging’). By doing so, the Call of Duty developers place a premium on the compelling and addictive nature of their gameplay to drive a larger consistent online player population and greater sales, rather than on the addictive properties of highly competitive gameplay (read: skill-based matchmaking for closely matched games) to create a compelling experience for players (to once again drive a larger online player population, more popularity, and better sales).
The end goal of any developer is always the same: to drive sales. Developers simply differ in the approaches they take in catering their gameplay experience to the characteristics of the audience they wish to target.
In Call of Duty, it is the developer’s hope that the addictive offering of Leaderboards (i.e. for tracking total score, score per minute, etc.) and the ‘variable reward’ mechanic of leveling up is a strong enough incentive not only to keep playing but to give you a sense of purpose while you continue to do so. As you progress through the multiplayer experience, players complete challenges and score experience points towards advancing in level. By gaining levels, you unlock new guns, perks, killstreaks, and gadgets that you can deploy in custom class slots to tailor the multiplayer experience to your liking. The structure of this incentive scheme is consistent with that of ‘variable reward’ (although transparent by game design i.e. kill 10 dudes with this gun and get 100 xp ). As anyone who has studied psychology knows, variable reward systems are the most compelling systems for motivating compulsive subject behaviour. As an additional layer of incenting gamer behaviour, there are the oft-mentioned leaderboards. Leaderboards drive hardcore competitive players’ gameplay behaviour to constantly seek to improve their in-game performance. However, as we all know, in-game performance enhancement is not the sole (or necessarily optimal) method to increase leaderboard score and ranking. As such, there can be detrimental side-effects when gamers single-mindedly pursue stat enhancement. Examples of this are common (i.e. not playing an objective, headshot lobbies, etc.). Some collaterals are less obvious. For instance, when an optimal strategy becomes prevalent in a gaming community (as a result of imbalanced game design for instance), then players are punished (in the form of poorer in-game performance) when they deviate from the de facto standard. The combination of the less fun, less successful in-game experience combined with leaderboard performance penalties provides even less incentive for games to be creative with how they approach the game or how they play. You end up with a gameplay experience that is still compelling and addictive, but the lack of variety and stale metagame erodes the fun for all but the most compulsive and hard-core (or utterly casual and oblivious) of your player user-base. The net result: players leave your population of online players; the lifespan of your community wanes; your sales figures don’t realize what “might have been possible”.
Brink’s Development Philosophy for Gameplay Design and Balance:
Splash Damage seems to anticipate having a wide variance of gamer skill in its online Brink multiplayer community.
The developers of Brink are painstakingly using whatever measures possible to not only welcome non-multiplayer gamers into the fold, but to provide them with an experience free of ‘griefers’ and stat-whores who would compromise that experience. Accordingly, Splash Damage has teamplay focused gamplay with a tiered matchmaking system (by level i.e. 1-5, 6-10, etc.) and they have removed leaderboards.
Brink has been designed from the ground up so that single-player is an objective-based mode that mirrors the experience to be had with online multiplayer. To this end, Splash Damage has developed AI that believably mimics or performs at a level consistent with human opponents, and they have designed a communication system and interface that is effective and functions irrespective of computer AI, geographic dialect or language barriers.
Interestingly, Splash Damage seems to focus its offering on delivering a compelling teamplay experience complete with a unique art direction; a vast array of customization options; a novel level navigation mechanic (SMART); and a variable reward xp leveling system to drive compulsive gamer behaviour (up until the level 20 cap, that is).
Likewise, Brink’s developers are trying to develop game balance that does not reward sub-optimal strategies and one that, hopefully, leads to a varied metagame. Ideally, in the event that certain strategies do become metagame-dominant, they will at least have been balanced to coincide with satisfying objective completion and/or promoting teamplay.
So How Is ELO Ranking Relevant to Brink?:
In my opinion, it is from the standpoint of an inexperienced multiplayer gamer, that ELO makes the most sense. My intuition tells me that an inexperienced multiplayer gamer would be more likely to play offline until achieving a high level (say, approaching the level cap of 20) before venturing online.
Under the present system, that gamer would now, for the first time, be facing off against battle-hardened multiplayer gamers who progressed through the level cap against other human opponents. By virtue of this fact, I would expect the multiplayer ‘noob’ to be at a distinct disadvantage.
My supporting assumptions for this are as follows:
If the net result of these two assumptions is that an inexperience multiplayer ‘noob’ goes up against real humans for the first time at level cap 20, then they will accumulate loss after loss. This, in turn, will sour their experience with online multiplayer, and they will be reluctant to return as a result.
Therefore, if a ‘noob’ simply loses over and over at a high level cap with the net result that they don’t become multiplayer gamers, then all (or most) of Splash Damage’s efforts to incorporate new multiplayer gamers will have been in vain.
Under this scenario, it would make sense to have an ELO system in place to account for skill variations in those players who arrive at the top matchmaking tier of 16-20 and the level 20 cap through offline play.
If you made it this far, thanks for your time and consideration.
[QUOTE=Coolaguy;263746]when an optimal strategy becomes prevalent in a gaming community (as a result of imbalanced game design for instance), then players are punished (in the form of poorer in-game performance) when they deviate from the de facto standard. The combination of the less fun, less successful in-game experience combined with leaderboard performance penalties provides even less incentive for games to be creative with how they approach the game or how they play. You end up with a gameplay experience that is still compelling and addictive, but the lack of variety and stale metagame erodes the fun for all but the most compulsive and hard-core (or utterly casual and oblivious) of your player user-base. The net result: players leave your population of online players; the lifespan of your community wanes; your sales figures don’t realize what “might have been possible”.
Likewise, Brink’s developers are trying to develop game balance that does not reward sub-optimal strategies and one that, hopefully, leads to a varied metagame. Ideally, in the event that certain strategies do become metagame-dominant, they will at least have been balanced to coincide with satisfying objective completion and/or promoting teamplay.[/QUOTE]
You’ve elaborated on “campers suck” quite well. Also you described how many people don’t go for “find the exploit and get a cookie” and give up on games. You know what’s going on. I think most don’t even realize these concepts. Forums end up having people asking for more games with systems that encourage this. They realize it’s there, but not what affect it has.
Games are more complicated than people may think. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elo_rating_system Halo 3 is using something for chess! In another thread comparing Brink was compared to chess. But SC2 and Halo 3 are both from mature franchises. Brink is new and the development resources may have not been available for this yet.
Holy ****, that’s got to be the best first post ever. Have some reputation. For every hundred new guys a truly bright mind appears.
The cool thing about the ELO system is that it can be applied to individuals, random groups of individuals, or teams. The system simply applies a ranking to each unique group of players. In the case of Starcraft 2, for instance, you could even be assigned a ranking for your performance with ‘Random’ teammates.
Indeed, it’s amazing, and it’s addictive. You’ve got perfectly suited matches on demand and something to progress in.
The biggest downside about Blizzard’s system is that they hide the rating. I think they do it to keep it newbie-friendly (if you don’t know how much you suck, your ego isn’t hurt) but for me it dulls the excitement a bit.
My supporting assumptions for this are as follows:
- I expect that 'noob’s will be unfamiliar with the more-creative and exploitive strategies of real human players.
- I expect that real human players in parties operating in coordination will be superior to the efforts of a random group of human players.
If the net result of these two assumptions is that an inexperience multiplayer ‘noob’ goes up against real humans for the first time at level cap 20, then they will accumulate loss after loss. This, in turn, will sour their experience with online multiplayer, and they will be reluctant to return as a result.
you “expect” ?
1 obviously you won’t know how to play untill you actually play, that’s a given
2 coordinated players in a team based game doing better than random players, who would have thought that possible ? nuther given
oh, yeah, the way it is now, low levels only get to play high levels if they want to, high levels can’t choose low levels to play against
other than that, meh, lot of words for a tiny point
[QUOTE=Coolaguy;263746] ----
If you made it this far, thanks for your time and consideration.[/QUOTE]
I like this guy. MTV generation won’t bother to read even half of it of course 
the tiny point I refer to is the desire for an ELO based rating system, a point I thought you had already made
but geez louise, just post a link explaining the system like you did, don’t pontificate about it
We all know why CoD does well in sales, the promise of something new every time you play (reward not expeience) and the chance to be a leaderboard hero, a ranking system isn’t going to change anything there, so why even mention the game
all sizzle, no steak
Another post goes over your head and you’re back complaining. The entire thread has been served in a single post, with many related concepts explained to support the idea. My angle from the beginning of this thread is the practical one. If a feature is good, it’s probably been explored. If it hasn’t been implemented it was probably buried by other priorities. Our literate lurker friend explained the habits games tend to create with other scoring systems. The paragraphs on metagaming strategies becoming de facto are my favorite parts. That alone can get it’s own thread (trick jumping as one subject). This partially relates to why I don’t like games being compared to CoD/BF/Halo. People are “aware” of these ultimate metagame optimizations you must choose, and ask that every game get those same features. Make it easier to find the exploit cookie then rinse and repeat. They inadvertently want things simplified and don’t even understand what they’re asking for. It’s crazy how this came out of nowhere, but I’m delighted there are random people out there who not only are savy of multiplayer dynamics but can write eloquently.
over my head ?
buddy that one rolled past
I just tire of vebosity over substance
it all begins to sound like that famous quote “If you can’t dazzle them with brilliance, baffle them with bull****”
that said, I do agree it was well written, but largely irrelevant
idea was same, but calculations[and amounts of them]fairly more serious. as well as result i hope.
[QUOTE=Apples;263653]TALKING ABOUT COMPETITION LEAGUE HERE, not a group of random playing together… Maybe caps will make you read harder
The try harder was not aimed at anyone in peculiar btw, no offense…
And yes Etek if you get raped day by day in a league its time to relearn some strat and improve your aim.[/QUOTE]
Competitive players make their own leagues, separate from the public servers, so your point is futile. And I doubt you can take me down easily in a shooter or rts game ;0).
[QUOTE=tokamak;263766]
The biggest downside about Blizzard’s system is that they hide the rating. I think they do it to keep it newbie-friendly (if you don’t know how much you suck, your ego isn’t hurt) but for me it dulls the excitement a bit.[/QUOTE]
During the last blizzcon, they explained why it is hidden. Mainly two reasons:
Challenge accepted! Nah I guess you can’t read properly so I wont bother anymore I told it wasnt personal but general statement, and I said that if you want league integrated system this one might not work.
/thread to me dont have the time anymore for the interwebz war!
Right now I’m playing BC2 where you can find me as doubledigit and Starcraft 2 where you can find me as Etek #209.
I don’t understand why are you talking about competitive when what we care about is public servers.